Anime Review: Zenshu
Natsuko Hirose is an anime director, and something of a young prodigy. She worked her way up from the bottom in record time, and has now been placed in charge of an actual upcoming movie, a romantic comedy entitled First Love. Problem is, Natsuko’s been so focused on becoming an animator since childhood that she never got around to experiencing romance herself, and doesn’t understand the genre. Thus she is experiencing creative block, not helped by her insistence on doing everything herself rather than allow her support staff to assist. Then she eats bad sushi and dies.
Or does she? When Natsuko awakens, she finds herself in another world, quickly identified as that of her childhood favorite animated movie, A Tale of Perishing. In this fantasy tale, the heroic Luke Braveheart and the other Nine Soldiers fight a losing battle against the Void Soldiers which are attempting to eat the world’s last Soul Future. One by one, they die, and Luke succumbs to despair, allowing the Ultimate Void to swallow everything. While well-animated and directed, it was a box office bomb largely due to some murky storytelling and the depressing ending.
The heroes don’t know what to make of the disheveled, hairy, and ranting Natsuko, but when the Void Soldiers attack again, she learns that she has the power to turn her animation into actual moving objects, and uses this to defeat the creepy crawlies and incidentally save comic relief character Uni the unicorn from his death at this point in the storyline.
Natsuko joins the Nine Soldiers and uses her foreknowledge of plot events and anime powers to change events. Soon, she’s derailed A Tale of Perishing into a much more optimistic timeline. But does she have the right to do so? And can she really keep this up forever?
This short anime series is a love letter to animation and its power to move people, airing early in 2025.
In fanfiction, one of the many subtypes is the “fix-it fic” in which the writer takes displeasing events in a canon storyline, and presents a world where things are “better.” For example, a story based on Gone with the Wind except that Scarlett and Rhett’s child doesn’t die, and the couple are able to reconcile. Zenshu is a term in the Japanese animation industry for “fix all”, so it’s appropriate for Natsuko’s attempt to change the destiny of the people whose story she’s invading. (And she literally changes Destiny, a character who was Luke’s love interest in the movie.)
However, it’s hinted that by focusing so heavily on how awesome Luke was and her single-minded urge to get good at animation, Natsuko may have missed the point the movie was trying to make and the lessons it was attempting to teach. She’s even confronted by the original film’s director who’s displeased with the sabotage. It’s not surprising when the world starts pushing back and trying to move things back on track to the tragic ending.
However, this series itself is not quite so gloomy, and there is hope at the very end. Perhaps it is Natsuko herself who needs to change and grow.
Good: There’s some nifty animation and effects, even though the series uses some stock footage (and lampshades that it’s doing so.) The plotline is intriguing, and most of the characters are interesting.
Less good: Some of the characters are flat and uninteresting, and the rerailing of the plot involves large sections of the human population turning into stupid assholes.
Content note: Characters die, including animals and children (and basically everyone.) Suicidal thoughts are expressed and sometimes acted on. Destiny and her father both wear fanservicey brief outfits, but Destiny’s outfits and curves are more prominently displayed. One of the characters is an alcoholic, and booze shows up frequently. Polygamy. Teens on up, I’d say.
This is a nice twist on the isekai subgenre. Recommended to fans of anime, particularly fantasy anime.
